The UK’s Channel 4 has a series entitled “City of Vice,” which is essentially a cop drama set in Georgian London. Their Website features a Flash-based game called “Bow Street Runner” which asks you to join the squad and solve crimes in grimy, squicky, 1750s Covent Garden.

The game is episodic; you can ask to be alerted by e-mail when the next episode is available. It also warns that it is “designed to be historically accurate and therefore the game’s content and its setting may not be suitable for younger players.”

This looks like a game that would be interesting to play, give you a taste of London in the period 50 years before Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, and make you insanely grateful for indoor plumbing.